Grinding the Organ of Divergence
by Jebus Creiss
Summary: Had Buffy realised the importance of Xander being the buttmonkey to Willow's organgrinder all the way back before her 17th, this might have all been avoided… A post-Season 7 divergence, involving Xander, a Hell Dimension, hippie weirdness, one of the weirder het pairings you'll ever come across and the gratuitous flogging of several dead horses…er, Xander!tropes. Pun intended.
1. Welcome to my

**Disclaimer:** I am the sole owner of Buffy, Angel and Ranma ½. I also have a twenty-inch penis, which urinates greenbacks in a range of denominations. Here's some cheap marshland!

**Rating: T**

**Warnings:** _moderate_ **language**, _mild_ **violence**, large amounts of **nudity** and **sexual references**, though nothing explicit. Also, a fair number of **spoilers**, including for the comics. And, honestly this is the big one: **Gratuitous Trope Parody:** _Fun with Portals (FWP)_, _Crack (het) Pairing_,_Godlike!Xander_, _Multiple!Xander_, _Everybody Female/Xander_, _Agent-of-Chaos!Xander_… all played (mostly) straight.

**Canon:** Very close…up to a certain point, though technically an AR. This point, to be precise:

**Timeframe:** Early 2004, post-S7 (Buffy), around S5/Ep12 'You're Welcome' (Angel).

**Pairings:** see _Warnings_. Or at the end of the fic, where there will be a listing for convenience's sake.

**Summary:** Had Buffy realised the significance of Xander being the buttmonkey to Willow's organgrinder all the way back before her 17th birthday, this could probably have all been avoided… A post-Season 7 divergence, involving Xander, a Hell Dimension, hippie weirdness, one of the weirder het pairings you'll ever come across and the gratuitous flogging of several dead horses…er, Xander!tropes. And _yes_, the pun is definitely intended.

**A/N:** **1)** Disclaimer to the contrary, this is not actually a crossover. Those who know Ranma ½ will find significant holes in its depiction; this is due to Xander's poor in-depth knowledge of it. **2)** The root of this story, along with its title, came from wondering at the symbolism behind the S2 Slayer-dream. Hopefully the conclusion I took it to is somewhat original… That said, I have also shamelessly borrowed inspiration from themes and rationales (though not plots) developed by such well-entrenched authors as **dogbertcarroll** (mainly _Walking in the Shadows_), as well as 'TheDivineDemon' (the drabble '_What is My Worth?_') and 'Greywizard' (who has posted many rather well-done variations on these tropes) on TTH. Their work is largely awesome and well worth reading, if you haven't already.

* * *

**To Grind the Organ of Divergence**

**Chapter 1: Welcome To My…**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

As he 'listened' to the bizarrely familiar individual speak, Xander Harris tried to be surprised by what he was hearing. Not with any great effort, mind you. For seven years now he'd maintained to all and sundry that he was the universe's buttmonkey, despite a range of protests to the contrary. So who was he to argue when an apparent expert on the subject told him straight out that he was right?

He did have to admit – hearing all this from the mouth of someone who, if he didn't know better, could pass as none other than Elder Ku Lon of the Chinese Amazons? The selfsame 'person' that insisted he call 'her' by said name, and treat her as if she _were_ said fictional character? That was just _WEIRD_. And that was even after he got the hang of using the strange, almost telepathic spiritual connection that Ku Lon used to translate the dimension's speech into something that Xander could at least mostly comprehend.

Though considering how he got here? _Weird_ would pretty much cover all of it...

—ox-oxo-xo—

It was fairly well-known among the more worldly class of supernatural denizens that the term 'chaos demon' was not to be taken as a statement of said demon's species. 'Chaos' in such a case was commonly supposed to represent an alignment with certain demonic energies which might be called 'chaos', which well-suited the general disposition of a certain species of demons which thus tended to be called 'chaos demons' as a class.

This much, Xander had known.

What was certainly _not_ so well-known, largely because said 'chaos demons' didn't make a habit of clarifying matters even if they knew or cared about them, was precisely where the 'chaos' part of the equation came from. If Xander had known that part, then the erstwhile demon-hunter would have made a far greater effort to utilise fire in killing the demon in question, paying particular attention to setting alight the viscous goop slathering the demon's antlers, as opposed to merely beheading the mouthy little moose-bastard.

Sadly, as was eventually established much later, the 'goop' turned out in fact to be the _actual_ chaos demon, which existed in a symbiotic relationship with the antlered bipeds who had been given the moniker. Sure, it wasn't precisely sentient, or capable of surviving the death of its host for more than a few seconds. But as it turned out, those few seconds had been enough to fuel at least the momentary opening of the portal that its host had been trying to open.

If nothing else, it was at least fortunate that the loss of the host demon's input at the crucial moment stopped the portal from opening into the 'hell' that it had been trying to reach (if for no other reason that one should _not_ leave random portals to Wisconsin floating round in the middle of the Congolese jungle). Of course, it was even more fortunate that the mental cue that the portal's energies thus seized upon was none other than a passing thought in the mind of Xander Harris at the moment the portal swallowed him, regarding what he might consider a personal 'hell' were he suddenly condemned to one.

Really. It's like trying not to think of that white rhinoceros behind you.

—ox-oxo-xo—

_It was with a great sense of foreboding that Xander had looked round when the portal spat him out. That feeling was soon joined by a great sense of nakedness; one look down had proven that both feelings were there for a reason…unlike his clothes._

_Or his axe._

_He'd looked up, and examined his surroundings once more, this time for more detail than oh-shit-what's-jumping-out-at-me!, and this time paying more attention to certain aspects of the scenery that really should've been obvious the first time._

_Like the fact that he was standing in the middle of a strange village, like one of the primitive ones he'd seen over the past few months in Africa, only with different, somehow familiar building materials and designs. And vegetation, for that matter._

_Like the fact that there were over a dozen villagers in the immediate area, all of them staring at him with a strange look in their eyes, running the gamut of emotions between confusion, hostility, and a brazen calculation he'd always tended to associate with his female friends when they were taking a day out shopping._

_Like the fact that all these stares belonged to women. Most of them being highly attractive. Most of them looking at _him_ with that calculation in their eyes. And all of them being armed._

Yup_, he'd reflected, _it's official. I'm in one of the special hells…

_The next couple of hours had for the most part passed in a high-speed blur, as he frantically evaded and fended away what seemed a never-ending stream of weapon-wielding villagers – all of them women, and most of them grinning. It had occurred to him fairly early on in the chase that they were toying with him. Not that he minded not being caught – not when he'd already had a taste of this particular hell years back, thank you very much!_

_But all good things come to an end, and he'd finally tripped over a cane. A cane which had belonged to an extremely old, short, wrinkly woman clinging to the top of the cane like it was a pogo stick. An extremely ugly, strangely _familiar_ old woman who, terrifyingly, had that same glimmer of calculation in her eyes as all those women who had just backed off._

_Then, blankness. Like a sequence of memories had been removed._

_Followed by waking up, clothed in Oriental garb which looked and felt like pyjamas, at a table with a large meal in front of him – at the other end of which perched the old woman who had been the last thing he'd seen._

—ox-oxo-xo—

Xander idly ran his fingers through his conspicuously silky hair, steadfastly ignoring any and all clues to what that 'shampoo' could have excised. There were far more important – not to mention, far more sanity-friendly – things to think about. Such as what 'Ku Lon' had just told him, albeit in some nightmarish mix of audible mental suggestion and montage which a writer might call 'soulspeak' if they were feeling flowery.

The way he understood things, this place was at least technically a version of hell. Only, it was the kind of version that reminded him of something that Benny Hill might have come up with. And its denizens could be called succubi, if they weren't content to call themselves Amazons – with a dash of Futurama just to make it more hellish.

Hah. He'd always been thought of as a demon-magnet. And as it turned out, that was absolutely correct. More to the point right now, this unfortunate fact had somehow subsequently saved his bacon.

Xander still wasn't sure that the explanation he'd been given had sunk in; it was the sort of thing that Giles and Willow would've salivated over, kinda like the way even Ku Lon still did when she couldn't catch herself in time. There was much talk of 'higher frequencies of spiritual energies between dimensional planes' and 'insufficiently differentiating modes of perception' and so on. But from what he'd gathered, what it boiled down to was that his unconscious mind and spirit had gotten together behind his back and jacked his senses with something that he could understand, pulling together a bunch of pop-culture references – or in this case, one pop-culture paradigm – to allow him to function here. Which, as an added benefit, allowed Ku Lon to plug into that mindframe and communicate with him.

A 'village' full of 'Amazons', all named after girly things, led by an 'Elder'? Certainly easier to think about than a hell dimension full of weapon-wielding succubi, led by a elderly and cunning demon-lady…

Ku Lon had explained that, a lot like the fictional Chinese Amazons portrayed in the anime 'Ranma ½' his mind had pulled out of wherever to keep the rest of his brain from performing a realistic impression of Fyarl-snot, the succubi-like demons here _did_ capture and essentially enslave their men, raising any resulting boys as slaves as well. But more importantly, each man was kept as the _de facto_ property of just one, or occasionally two demons. This was tradition, and had been that way for time immemorial. One demon _could_ steal another demon's manslaves, by killing the other demon – but who in the hell got that up in arms about some manslave?

Tradition, fortunately, didn't count on demon-magnets dropping in. For the 'village's' inhabitants, it was like dropping Ranma Saotome into the Chinese Amazons' village – only ten times worse, because not only did just about _all_ of them want Xander, but they wanted him so badly that it was increasingly looking like many of them _would_ kill their 'sisters' to keep him. Ranma Saotome, Elder Ku Lon wanted for her grand-daughter. Xander Harris, 'Elder Ku Lon' wanted for herself…

His mind shuddered away from that awful precipice.

Again fortunately, and again much like the anime and manga, 'Ku Lon' was nobody's fool. Even the hell-dimension's ruler would only be able to hold Xander for so long before her 'village' rose up in revolt, to try to take him away from her. And, she almost immediately recognised that her attraction to him was simply not natural.

—ox-oxo-xo—

_It had been a long-held opinion among Xander Harris's friends that there had always been a touch of chaos to the guy. Now whether this could be attributed to his dress-sense, his predilection for breaking prophecy (just that one time, honest!), his sense of humour, the Halloween thing, or simply the fact that said friends tended in most cases to be supernatural women and thus predisposed to associate 'chaos' (read: genetically incomprehensible levels of mundane male stupidity) with the young man, was a matter of opinion. Most, however, would have been quite surprised to find that the complete opposite in fact applied._

_Unwitting agent of chaos? 'Zeppo' was only the worst moniker that _other_ people had used to refer to him. No, the one he had kept utterly silent about for years, the one he had tried to fight with the desperate fatalism of the inevitably doomed, was none other than 'Cipher'._

_'Cipher.' Pawn of the fates, railing helplessly as his life and experiences were used and abused _ad nauseum_, just one of the many control mechanisms by which the champions and assorted other heavy-hitters (which in this context pretty much boiled down to 'everyone else') were subtly steered to the desired conclusions._

_There was _reasons_ he referred to himself as the universe's buttmonkey, after all. And the big one, very much in keeping with his long-held habit of hiding the tragic behind the tacky, was that the friends who rolled their eyes at his put-upon whining about the universe having it in for his own mistakes were thus that much less likely to think in broader terms, cotton on to the game – and start driving away all the 'normal' people wholesale in a doomed effort to minimise their contact with the fates' pawns…starting with _him_._

_Selfish? Sure, but hey, most of them were still alive – and once people started cutting themselves off from the normal, bad, _bad_ things happened. The fates didn't need to go ensuring that kind of thing when simple psychology could do the work for them._

_In more recent months, in the wake of Anya's death, Xander had privately developed a hypothesis concerning this; namely, that fate (much like Anya) preferred to lead him around by the penis. Which only made sense, really. He was a guy – what better tool was there, pun definitely intended?_

_Ms. French, just to set the trend and precedent for everything that followed. The Hyena Primal and its attempt on Buffy's virginity to frighten her away from him, turning the young Slayer further towards Angel – such that even resuscitating her in the Master's cave failed to get her attention. Then that dance at the Bronze to get him to begin turning away from her, opening Xander up to further inroads for the various fates' plans. Saving Cordelia from the Epps. 'Impata', and saving Willow from her. Halloween, and Cordelia's interest in Soldier-Guy. Then, the Terakan assassins and making out with Cordy, along with Oz piquing Willow's interest as she began to despair netting her longtime crush…_

_And why? All to set up for the fall._

_For Angel/Angelus, the breaking of his curse led a little over a year later to his relocation to L.A. – and the fallout over Cordelia's breakup with Xander, along with her family's I.R.S. woes, led her to join him there…falling right into the hands of 'Jasmine' and her plans for world conquest, the ones which had only come crashing down as things built to an implosive end in Sunnydale. As well, the resulting fallout of his breakup with Cordy had pushed him to the outer edge of the Scoobies, leaving him in a position to defuse the threat of Jack O'Toole – not to mention lay the formwork for his subsequent inability to sway Faith from her traipse down the Dark Side of the Slaylicious Violence, a path which would mostly put her out of the way for several years and leave Buffy as the only active Slayer…which left her isolated. And so led to her sacrifice to end Glory, her resurrection months later (not just to save her from 'hell', but to get the Hellmouth's Slayer back), her destructive liaison with Spike which eventually led him to attaining his soul… The list went on._

_And that list just got longer when you included Willow in that. The eventual demise of her relationship with Oz, her relationship with Tara, the resurrection and her subsequent dark magic addiction, which culminated with her taking on a massive amount of magic (with Xander there to save her for long enough for the world's new magical superpower to adjust to dealing with said magic)…_

_The result was nothing less than the simultaneous setting up and knocking down of both the First Evil and a titanically potent Power That Was._

_Now, if he factored in Anya – herself brought into the mix as a result of Xander and Cordelia's breakup? Under her influence, Xander became a more confident individual, with something approaching a life away from the Scoobies – but that influence also served to keep him alienated from the others as her personality constantly rubbed the others the wrong way, thus keeping him from having too much influence on events. On the plus side, Xander's money from his construction jobs and Anya's financial smarts had come in greatly handy after Joyce had died and the Summers fell into financial straits. But very much on the negative ledger, it ruined him for anyone else for a long time, coming after a particularly blatant round of manipulation turned his wedding into an unmitigated disaster._

_That didn't mean the games were over though, no sirree. Lately he'd been quietly entertaining the idea of taking a break and popping in to visit Buff and the Dawnster in Rome. He'd been quietly horrified – and utterly _furious_ – to realise that in the depths of his cot in the late, late nights, a growing part of the urge was to see _Dawn_ as much as, if not more than Buffy._

_As in, in the potentially romantic sense._

_Sure, it'd be a cold day in hell before he pulled a Deadboy. But he was perfectly well-aware that Dawn had been crushing on him ever since she was created…and just incidentally, was beginning to develop a run of dating flops that showed every sign of following in the footsteps of Xander's sterling example – with the unsurprising result that she wasn't going to be getting inappropriately close to another romantic option. And that while it would likely be years before he could really bring himself to consider moving on and finding happiness without Anya, by the time that happened…well, how old would Dawn be then? Legal, definitely. More likely hitting her twenties._

_He could smell the wife-trap from years away. And _sure_, he was pissed about that right now. But since when had the universe ever really given him the choice? Give it a few years, wear his resolve down with a continuing succession of crappy dates that invariably ended with Slaying, and who knows?_

_Hell, he'd even thought once, what were the chances Buffy would finally 'realise' she'd fallen in love with him, just in time to lose him to her little sister? Now wouldn't _that_ take the cake?_

—ox-oxo-xo—

He sat rapt as 'Ku Lon' finally, _finally_ explained one of the deepest mysteries of the Scoobyworld: why _was_ Xander Harris such a demon-magnet?

It all came down to souls, and their innate, instinctual, varying levels of magic, and what a great many parties could work with that knowledge. Though he did have to admit, Xander did find it somewhat disappointing how _lazy_ the Powers That Be could be when it came to that sort of thing. Contrary to his late-night musings on the subject, the Powers didn't really have to do anything but take advantage of his own heart.

Or more specifically, the big honking karmic loudspeakers screaming "_**PROPERTY OF WILLOW ROSENBERG AND DAWN SUMMERS!**_" as high as they could go.

Willow's spiritual hooks were perfectly straightforward, once he remembered that even back when she was just starting out in playing with the Wicca, Willow had always had more power than Giles had thought safe. For over a decade even back then, her soul's inborne magics had already latched in proprietary fashion onto Xander, her friend and crush. Jesse's death and the mystical upheavals since had only intensified that link, which lost none of its possessiveness even when the romantic aspect fell away.

Dawn's hooks had been in place ever since the Key was made human and given soul – and the resulting link had been made all the stronger, both by the heady power of Dawn's own soul (probably something to do with the Key, Ku Lon said and he reluctantly agreed with), as well the way that the Dagon monks had assigned those soul-bonds in the first place.

After all, there really hadn't been the need for that many. And some of them had broken soon thereafter. The sister-bond with Buffy remained strong, certainly – only strengthened, if _very_ unwillingly and often against the flow of events, by the addition of the mother-bond with Joyce's death. But the father-bond had been practically severed even as the monks spelled it into existence, and was predictably subsumed into the blatantly constructed soulmate-bond she had with Xander, though parts of both bonds had drifted off to hook onto Spike for a while as she waited to grow up enough to net her Xander-shaped husband.

A lot of demons were sensitive to that sort of thing, especially the ones who were interested with sex in all its uses. Not that they listened to what the message was – but when they ran across someone metaphysically screaming at the top of their lungs everywhere they went, of course they were going to wonder who was making all the racket!

How all that was important right now, though, was both the reason this qualified as a certifiable Special Hell to one Xander Harris – and, paradoxically, the reason that he was going to be allowed to escape it.

Basically, it was the Ranma Saotome factor – on steroids. Because in this hell-dimension, as far as the Amazons' appetites went, it was all down to three things: Size, Taste and Dibs—

(Xander frantically stomped on the spontaneous mental image that the phrasing caused, as Ku Lon started drooling again.)

—of/on the potential manslave's _soul_. Willow and Dawn's deep, powerful connections had, in the ways of true love everywhere, caused his own soul to swell in sympathetic response and an attempt to be worthy of that love, making his soul more potent than most. Then the 'taste', which, as Ku Lon informed him with a lecherous grin that made him shudder, was apparently _scrumptious_. That was apparently due to his long list of life experiences, particularly of the supernatural flavour.

And as for the 'Dibs'? Well, greed was a popular theme in the demonic makeup, now wasn't it? _Especially_ in this case, where dibs _had_ been placed on Amazon Village's newest never-ending banquet…only by a pair of _foreigners_.

Which, all put together, certainly explained the collective reaction of '_MINE!_' upon his arrival.

Only, the very magnitude of that mass attraction to Xander, was exactly his saving grace. Because that attraction was so great, with so many wanting him so badly, that not even Ku Lon herself held the ability to actually keep a hold of him – not when Ku Lon informed him that the entirety of the village would be rebelling against her rule _en masse_ before the week was out if she tried. And worse, those very spiritual links that helped make him so irresistible – were held in the hands of two young women who, almost uniquely, had both the will and the means to form rescue expeditions and take him back by however much force was required.

Taking _that_ on board, Xander solemnly nodded in complete understanding and agreement. No-one in their right mind wanted Darth Rosenberg blasting through their home dimension with the Wicca-boots of Stompiness strapped on – let alone the kind of people she'd be bringing as backup.

So in short: he was getting sent back as soon as 'Ku Lon' could possibly arrange it to be so.

He asked, pretty fluently because it was such a simple concept, if she had any idea how.

The method went right over his head, as expected. But he gathered something about siphoning off a smidgeon of Dawn's latent Key powers from her soul-link, then snapping that link and using that partially freed portion of Xander's soul to follow the _other_ soul-link to Willow, zeroing onto her location and using that little splinter of Key to open a portal there.

Needless to say, Xander was immediately aghast at this.

Assurances were dealt out in matter-of-fact fashion. Dawn's link to Buffy would anchor her, even assuming that she didn't have enough _real_ life experience to anchor her sufficiently anyway, and even then it was only a momentary sundering – it would grow back into place almost immediately. A soul-bond took _two_ people, after all, and it was only being sliced at the one end. The sheer force of habit would take care of it growing back on his end. And as for the Key-fragment, _of course_ she wouldn't keep it – who knew what Willow and the Council's forces would do to get that fragment back? Oh, and the link to Willow wasn't really going to be damaged at all – it would just be given a big ol' _TWANG_ for triangulation purposes.

Xander momentarily paled – having lost _that_ potential threat among the mystic technobabble and worries about Dawn exploding. But okay, if Willow wasn't going to go nuclear, then that was fine.

He relaxed…

And flinched when he saw that damn smirk crossing her face.

Of course, there was _always_ going to be a condition. It was _her_ home ground, _her_ making the travel arrangements. And dammit, she was a _demon_ – a demon cunning enough for his mind to pick Elder Ku Lon of Ranma ½ as her avatar, no less!

And by the lecherous glee etched into her wrinkly visage, he knew exactly what she wanted.

Xander pulled into himself for a while, mulling over his options.

Xander knew his Willow back to front, his time here being forced to think in those terms only intensifying that; as such, he could take a _very_ educated guess at what Willow's range of reactions could be, depending on the condition he was in when they next met. What was immediately obvious was that Willow would probably forgive a lot, providing 'Ku Lon' fired off enough excuses along the lines of 'so sorry, we couldn't get him to you so we had to wait for you to open the way, what with the blah-blah, mystic technobabble, yadda-yadda inserted in this sentence he didn't do too well here, etcetera, etcetera, no hard feelings?' to satisfy her that it wasn't malicious. And what with the pervasive levels of soul-reading going on, he was willing to bet excessive amounts that Ku Lon was familiar enough with Willow's workings by now to eke out the maximum mistreatment she could get away with without reprisal.

But to go _there_…the mind shuddered!

But then, what condition would he be in when he got back? Africa HQ was probably dealing all _kinds_ of not-well with his sudden suspicious absence, and he wanted back there ASAP. But the worse condition he was in when he did get returned, he realised with a sigh, the longer Willow would mercilessly baby him to death and stop him from getting back to what he _should_ be doing.

But to go _there…_!

But— hang on a minute…

Xander looked back over at Ku Lon, wondering 'aloud' if there was any other reason she wanted…_that_.

The answer was simple, and came back to the 'soul as power' concept. She needed to expend power to short out Dawn's soul-link and shave off a slice of Dawn's power anyway. So why not harvest some off him in exchange for providing the service herself? That her condition involved 'that' was just a bonus to her, really.

Xander sat there, torn. On the one hand…_eugh_! But on the other hand, his people back in Africa were counting on him, and Willow would go ballistic when she heard about this, and— hey, there was an idea…

That grin was terrifying. But it was also confirmation. So, secure in the knowledge that at least he wouldn't have to live with the memory of doing this after the deed was done, he braced himself to grin and bear it, and stood—

—ox-oxo-xo—

—And found himself stretched out naked and sweaty, mildly exhausted and aching in vaguely familiar places on a surprisingly luxurious bed, and a (normally clothed) Elder Ku Lon happily perched on a chair across the room, smoking a cigarette of all things, with an immensely satisfied look on her face.

He ran his fingers through silky smooth hair, and thanked his lucky stars.

"_So, clothes? Any chance of a bath?_"

"_No point with the clothes, sonny, it'll be hard enough just sending _you_ back. There's a barrel you can use out the back._"

Xander began to consider a response. Then he blanched, staring at a similarly surprised 'Amazon elder'.

"_Oh, that can't be good…_"

"_Huh, that didn't happen the first time…_"

They stared at each other for a while.

Then Ku Lon shrugged. "_Oh well, nothing we to do about that now. I'll be sending you off when you're ready._"

He sighed, resigned to yet another round of The Inevitable Mindfudgery of Xander Harris, and staggered off to find that barrel.

—ox-oxo-xo—

A short time later found a visibly replenished Xander Harris and a sprightly 'Elder Ku Lon' out the back, with the unwilling dimensional interloper standing – still sadly bereft of clothing, to Ku Lon's mild amusement (and lust, don't forget the lust) – in the centre of a ritual circle. Ku Lon tore her eyes away from the uncomfortable ex-carpenter for long enough to check over the circle. She nodded with satisfaction.

"_Well, time to get you on your way! First…_"

Her face scrunched up in concentration. Xander shivered like a bucket of ice-cold water had been splashed on his head.

"_Don't worry sonny, all part of the process. Next…_"

A shocked gasp ripped its way out of his throat as that metaphysical water, which felt like it instantly hardened like a second skin around him, snapped out in a Mr. Fantastic impersonation. And a picture flared into his mind…

* * *

Dawn Summers stopped, tensing as she felt a familiar yet improbable presence. The fine fabric of the dress she'd been examining in a mildly interested fashion, the product of Buffy's suggestion of a bout of shopping to take their minds off worrying about her closest male friend's sudden disappearance last night, slid unheeded through her fingers and back onto the bed.

"Xander…?"

* * *

"_And a tiny little snip…_"

Xander's new, latex-coated spiritual appendage started to burn like wasabi up the nostrils…

* * *

Dawn twitched.

* * *

…as the image of a suddenly apprehensive Dawn Summers receded to almost nothing—

"_And now a good hard RIP…!_"

—And then snapped off like a TV with an almost audible burst of pseudo-electrical discharge. The 'arm' snapping back into itself, leaving him at once bloated and impossibly, achingly _empty_.

* * *

Buffy came storming in at her sister's cry, to find her in a sudden, inexplicable panic, dropped to her knees and clutching at her chest with wide, wide eyes.

"XANDER!"

* * *

"_Good. Now it's your turn, sonny. Think of your Willow, and…_"

He didn't need to be told that. With what felt like half his soul broken off and lodged in his gullet, Xander was searching frantically for his Willow before the words could leave her mouth, the spiritual earthquake that rattled him to his bones shrugged off in his single-minded mission.

That titanic shuddering, though, was plenty in evidence when he attempted to look in on his childhood friend, leaving him a mental image distorted as white water rapids…

* * *

Willow snapped upright in her bed. "Xander?"

A familiar pressure, with a hammering sense of urgency and an garbled element of pleading that actually compared to the emotional broadcast he never did figure out he was blasting her with on Kingman's Bluff, exploded into her consciousness. Xander was in trouble! Xander was trying to get through to her! And her link to him was being twanged like a rubber band!

Well, she could do something about _that_! A twist of mental focus, a magical boost to the signal, another tendril of pure power to shove aside the barrier, and _there he was_! And – yes, he was reaching out to her! She gathered power to herself from the magically consecrated earth surrounding the entire estate, Gaia dancing to her will as she strained out and shunted away the incidental energy draw from her sleeping girlfriend and reached out with a joyful, "I'VE FOUND YOU!"—

* * *

"_Aaaaand..._"

When the picture cleared up and Willow stared right back at him with with that beautiful Willow-face, he didn't even care about the abrupt way that second skin hardened again and surged out, burning chunk of Keyness in its grasp. He just knew, just knew with the conviction of someone who was consciously and wholeheartedly convincing himself and not daring for even a _picosecond_ to believe anything else – that he was about to go home, to his people, to the people that he loved.

Xander took advantage of his pretzelled sense of reality one last time, to bask in the priceless privilege of understanding exactly what that love felt like—

"…_off you go!_"

* * *

**Ending A/N:** this will be a three-parter, or more accurately a two-parter with epilogue. The next chapter, about twice as long as this one, will be up in a couple days to allow for final revisions. Until then, please leave comments (especially concrit) on your way out/past.


	2. Foolish Ascension

**Disclaimer:** not mine. Refer first chapter.

**A/N:** All right ladies'n'gents, pull on the hip-waders. We're goin' a-trope-ing… (Oh, and: Warning - gratuitous epicness inbound.) (Also, thanks to 'dylanredefined' and 'studyofchaos' for their reviews.)

* * *

**To Grind the Organ of Divergence**

**Chapter 2: Foolish Ascension**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

What happened at that moment would be feverishly reconstructed by mystical experts on all sides the world over. Their opinions would of course vary with perspective and available knowledge. But to understand this, it was first imperative to understand a number of factors that contributed to the event. (Though for the sake of your poor overworked brain's convenience, a simple summary _has_ been provided at the end of the chapter.)

…

**F**or example, Xander's place in the supernatural community to that point.

With Anya's death, Xander's fatalistic introspections had been but the most subtle of his efforts at emotional distraction. The most obvious one had been throwing himself into his work – first in Cleveland, acting as a brood-mother and jack-of-all-trades to a den of Slayers, then flying off to Africa once things stabilised and the worldwide operation was recentred on the U.K.. This more recent move, shuffling off to the middle of nowhere and leaving the rest of the world to percolate without him, had perpetuated a strange dichotomy in his reputation among the New Council.

On the one extreme, the original Scoobies' long-running underestimation of his abilities, and their constant attempts to coddle him and worry overmuch for his safety, had fuelled a common perception of Xander Harris as ineffectual and largely unsuited for the fight when measured up against the plethora of supernatural cohorts surrounding him – little better than even Andrew, and that was only because he had at least been more consistently loyal than the ex-demonologist. This was particularly the case among the more hidebound Watchers who had survived Caleb's culling and those who followed the Robin Wood school of training, as well as many of the new Slayers. (Whether or not some of these worthies had some innate inkling of the uses of mundane plebs as Fate's bitches, again, could be up for debate – especially when it came to Robin himself, who could certainly claim some of the same 'mundane' pitfalls were he of a mind to do so.)

On the other extreme, one thing that could said for Xander's personality as time went on was that it tended to engender an intense sense of loyalty and trust on the part of those he worked with, in spirit if not in direct power, even if they themselves also often succumbed to overworry about his safety and wellbeing. It was also important to note – and very easy to forget for those who had the luxury of basing themselves in more civilised climes – that Xander was working in one of the world's most dangerous areas… particularly for Slayers with their hardwired reluctance to kill humans, even humans who, in the case of Africa, often acted as evil as if not _worse_ than the demons that preyed on them. And it was in Africa, as the need for it arose time and again, that the long-dormant memories and skills of Xander's Halloween '97 persona finally had the chance to resurface in earnest. So for those who were actually in the trenches (read: jungle, savannah and/or desert) next to the one-eyed Californian, it was far plainer to see that he was _flourishing_ there.

Perhaps the best estimation of this pro-Harris extreme would be the quiet rounds of betting which had already begun back in the tentative HQ in Kenya: not so much on whether Xander would finally stop skirting along the edges and just burn the hell out, as on whether he would allow anyone to even _notice_ when he did…assuming he hadn't already.

And none of this took into account the bizarre way that both extremes of reputation mixed with the stories of his sexual prowess. Or Andrew Wells' predilections for mythmaking. Or the fact that as much as Xander had tried sometimes, it was far harder to keep the demonic underworld from gossiping about certain of his own exploits than it was to just not tell his friends and colleagues about them.

**A**part from factoring Xander's reputation into the analysis, it was also imperative to take into account a certain mental instability on his part that had gone undiagnosed – and utterly unnoticed, for that matter – for a very long time.

The United States' D.R.I. had been around for many decades, its ill-fated foray into practical applications for its research at the turn of the millenium being but a more concerted than usual push for the pay-off. Countless hours and dollars had in fact been sunk along many different avenues of supernatural quantification. For instance, the (heavily classified) Ph.D. thesis by one of Dr. Walsh's contemporaries had been on none other than what he had called 'Sunny's Little Helper' – or, as the Slayerettes knew it more intimately, Sunnydale Syndrome.

Based on the idea of a natural extension of repression in the face of trauma, Dr. Bert-Carroll posited the hypothesis of a very mild, usually vestigial offshoot of Multiple Personality Disorder, expressed in a number of unacknowledged, habitual superstitions taken to keep the subject somewhat safer from the relatively high-frequency Hostile Sub-Terrestrials – such as refraining from verbal invitations to one's home, for example. The theory ran that everything that was witnessed, everything that could be reasonably extrapolated from anecdotal evidence, along with the traditional body of superstitions that came with these unregistered data, was collected in the form of a very basic subconscious shadow-persona which would, much like certain schizophrenic cases, subtly nudge the subject's actions in the direction which best preserved their life and/or sanity…or, as in many _more_ schizophrenic cases, their base desires. As the half-joking term implied, the (former) long-term residents of Sunnydale, California were notable in often tending to develop advanced forms of the condition – particularly those who had spent their formative years of childhood in Sunnydale, or to a lesser extent in other areas of high H.S.T. activity, such as certain areas of Cleveland, L.A. and Washington D.C..

Xander Harris had lived in Sunnydale for his entire life, thus making him fairly susceptible to the effects of S.L.H.. That condition was exacerbated by the many infinitesimally subtle 'defects' of every birth, which happened to be present in somewhat higher numbers due to Jessica Harris's low-grade alcoholism during her pregnancy with him. Statistically, this put him in the high-percentile ranges for an advanced version of the condition.

Sadly, while Bert-Carroll could research to an extent what effect conscious realisation of and consistent interaction with the paranormal might do to such a condition, that worthy could not but fail to take magic into account. Specifically, what would happen when several 'multiple', dominant personalities were first overlaid upon and then removed from the original. Or what would happen when most of them refused to leave without making at least _some_ sort of fuss.

Or what would happen once the hapless sufferer began consciously delving into the swollen muck-filled depths of his twisted 'vestigial' sub-conscious shadow-self for more and more detail.

As one Buffy Summers could and had attested several years ago, Xander's conscious mind was very much of the shallow variety. Even then, though, that shallow mindset had been but a rigorously (if _mostly_ subconsciously) followed 'high ground' of sorts – an edifice to cling to. Because as far as he was concerned, Down There Be _Monsters_…

The eyewatering mental contortions that had been inflicted on Xander's already unstable mind simply in order to function in Ranma's Hell – along with the further stress fractures that he had inflicted upon himself in order to bring a properly realistic sense of enthusiasm to fulfilling 'Ku Lon's' request, which the subsequent memory wipe could only _mostly_ reverse… Well, by this point that was merely the equivalent of someone lighting the fuse.

**T**he final imperative ingredient in the event that was perpetrated at that moment – and, in large part, the easiest to understand in a general sense – was the magical energies involved, and those wielding them.

On one end, a potent hell-dimensional being shoving open a door to Earth, Xander's siphoned spiritual energies merely a basic overlay of control over the tidal surge of what was by that point (somewhat ironically) one of the top 0.5-percentile most potent, unstable and _mutative_ souls belonging on that Earth at that moment, her own vast reserves devoted to delineating the door's bounds and anchoring herself to her own realm.

On the other end, one of the most potent witches in Earth's history, grasping at the door with mystical muscles bunching to rip it wide open and snatch her Xander back from his distant location. All her control centred on that coming sequence of action and not letting anything screw it up, though some attention did remain devoted to dealing with the oft-occurring screw-ups involving magic and Xander.

And in the middle? Xander Harris, and the fragment of Key energy that, in the penultimate moment, was released and triggered as what remained of the siphoned soul-magic dissipated with an emphatic shove to Xander's metaphorical posterior in the direction of the newly-made portal.

The net result was Willow yanking hard at the door – at the _exact_ moment the door was flung open from the other side.

It truly was a good thing that Xander's naive belief in her ability to deal with the unexpected panned out for the best this time. Because while a slightly younger and considerably cockier Willow Rosenberg might likely have been subject to the magical equivalent of falling on her butt – which, given the sheer 'velocities' involved, would probably have ended up in a massive explosion and at least one dead Scooby – _this_ Willow Rosenberg knew of some avenues into which all that excess force could be safely bled off. In fact, she even had the merest fraction of a second to eliminate physical discharge as an option (because of Kennedy lying not even a foot away) and limit spiritual earthing to the balance of the energies she had gathered, unless as a last resort while being utterly swamped (because screwed-over consecrations were a serious headache to fix), crack open the other pathways, and brace for impact.

Some of that power dissipated, transferring its energies to the push itself. A good third of it fell in on itself, which Willow recognised later when she had the time for it as Xander's instinctive attempt to stop himself from the equivalent of running smack-bang into her. Another tendril of power shot out from that condensing mass of Xander's link, snapping into place at the power of thought to lend its own efforts to support her, and metaphorically try to steady her if she fell anyway.

But then the rest of that force smashed head-on into her.

…Which was where the other factors combined and came into play.

Because at that Moment, there was something else she was doing.

"_**I'VE FOUND YOU!**_"

**B**ecause she _had_ cracked open her other pathways. And while many of them led to the ether in preparation for a relatively harmless bleeding of excess, uncontainable energies…some of them led to her other spiritual list of contacts.

* * *

Rupert Giles straightened at his mahogany desk, wincing reflexively at the sheer _volume_ of Willow's mental broadcast. Though how he was hearing that from _Brazil_ of all places…

The ageing Watcher began to smile as the import of her cry, and the overtones of its emotional scent, registered.

"Ah, Xander must have been found safe and sound…" Though it would have been reassuring to know that she had in fact gone looking even before Africa HQ had finished their preliminary searches and reported their findings. (All that had yet been established was that the jeep he had gone out on far-west patrol with, while still accounting for two Slayers, was unaccountably missing one Xander as of about sixteen hours ago. Apparently the two heavy-hitters had been caught up in their own skirmish, and lost sight of Xander for just a few minutes.)

Rupert allowed himself a moment of fond relief, wondering what on Earth had happened to the young man… and whirled at a flash of green light to his left—

* * *

**W**hich included the telepathic link left over from the Enjoining ritual of 2000, and intermittently reused since, when the situation called for it. Which, one might argue, was a situation this moment might fit.

* * *

Buffy jerked, her eyes snapping wide open and her lips beginning to stretch into a relieved grin—

* * *

**W**hich would have been all fine and dandy, except for the fact that one of the links on that list was a Slayer…

* * *

—only to stagger as her eyes went blank, Dawn clutching desperately, and helplessly, at her insensate sister in the midst of her panic attack.

* * *

…**A**nd, for the fact that she still held in one of the very shunted pathways that Willow had just cracked open – the very slice of power that she had leached from Kennedy. Which fed back into the slumbering Slayer from whence it came.

One of the first precepts of magic, one which Willow had been slow to grasp and until recently had suffered some fairly severe trouble with breaking, was the importance of intent, confidence and mood in one's casting. And so, with that unwitting mental broadcast in mind, the magics within her pathways interpreted that cry as a desire for wide-scale communication.

Which, given the designation of two different Slayers along two different pathways, was further interpreted as a clarion call to every last Slayer she could reach.

Which, given the massive overflow of energies she was being swamped with, and yet another pathway cracked open – in this case, the one left over by the Slayer Activation spell, one oft-used since to find the newly activated Slayers… was, well, ALL of them.

The result was the first ever instance of a world-wide Slayer dream.

And the subject?

The interpretation differed among the thousands of recipients. But the subject remained the same.

* * *

_**A courtly throne-room, filled to the brim with murmuring, confused Slayers. The walls etched with the faces of past Slayers, their faces staring down proudly on their successors. On the dais to the throne's right, a robed Watcher. On the dais to the throne's left, a robed Guardian. On the throne itself, a tear in reality's fabric gaped into a neverending desert of white sand, where Sineya stood peering out in constant vigilance.**_

(A great many Slayers subsequently recognised their comrades among that audience. For the rest, it was mostly Buffy who eventually filled the holes in. Among the varying levels of symbolic decoration surrounding each carved face of Slayers past, Kendra Young's had been eye-catching and relatively easy for Buffy to spot. Several of the girls present in spirit needed no hint as to the figure on the First Slayer's right, and in any case the way the blurry-faced male figure took off and polished his glasses was a definite hint. According to Buffy, the robes on the elderly female figure were pretty much the same as the ones she remembered the Last Guardian wearing before Caleb had killed her. And Sineya was _not_ someone Buffy would be forgetting any time soon…)

_**And off to one side, three more figures. On the left hand, a red-haired woman, wreathed in an aura of mystic lightning, and lit from above by blinding whiteness which battled unendingly with the contrasting, stygian shadows that snaked at her feet. On the right hand, another female figure, tall and slender, but with every other distinguishing feature masked by an inner light that glittered like purest emerald flame.**_

_**And from each, a leash leading from their right and left hands to a collar around the neck of the centre figure, red and green leather swallowed by the mass of chains wreathing the bound soul like a straitjacket. Those chains twisting together in eyewatering ways, in all directions. Thick binds anchored to the throne-room floor at the feet of his captors. Another braid of rattling links splitting away as it reached the dais, one at the feet of the Watcher while another fed into the desert void. And another massive spindle of steel, so thick it was like a solid, bulging pipe, which fed through an equally massive staple driven into the floor – before it burst into a multitude of chains thick and thin, single and twined around each other, snaking into the mass of Slayers. Thousands of glinting diamond staples before the feet of thousands, pinning the fine network of chains in place – from jewellery-like lengths for most of the assembled audience, to thick ropes to a couple dozen Slayers among them, all the way to two gnarled, chunky ropes of half-fused metal stapled to the ground before the two longest-serving Slayers.**_

_Wonder and awe and curiosity and suspicion were each doled out and devoted to the Dream of the Slayer Collective, eventually pulling their attentions along their allotted chains to the bound figure._

_**Shimmering in a veritable cloak of slavery, in all the metals under the sun and dirt, was a figure that radiated the epitome of 'pathetic'. The remnants of a jester's motley peeked out from the few visible gaps, worn to threadbare patches by the constricting binds, stained with sweat and blood and other juices.**_

(Several of the more fashion-conscious Slayers came to the conclusion that those 'other juices' probably matched the stains left by thrown tomatoes. It would have fit the motif, some of the European Slayers argued once it was explained to them.)

_**A dusty, moth-eaten jester's hat perched at a sad angle on the figure's head, one of the bells missing. Around the figure's hip, of all things, a plate-armoured chastity belt. Two padlocks, each spun into the thick adamant ropes leading to his captors' manacles. The mass of metallic rainment converging in a gleaming shank of burnished platinum, the captive's chains plunging in a jagged razor-mass into the figure's chest. And streaming up by the thousands, thin strands of wire led up from the chains to the ceiling…**_

_**And the myriad 'hands' of a squabbling pantheon of **_**Other****_ figures, many of them utterly inhuman, as they only occasionally paused a moment in their internecine bickering under an uncaring bone-pale moon to spare a sneer of cruel satisfaction down at their hapless, helpless puppet._**

_**And largely forgotten beneath them all, the Fool slumped.**_

(It was Giles, followed quickly by Dawn, who later seized upon the significance of the Fool.

A fixture peculiar to the European courts, the Fools were the ones who, secure in the 'hidden-in-plain-sight' safety of their ludicrous exteriors, tended to see everything – and _speak_ everything too, if only a wise courtier could parse their never-ending torrent of jokes and riddles. The greatest of Fools could play the entire court like an organgrinder, streamlining and subtly steering everything around them – all to the ultimate benefit of their king, to whom their loyalty was not to be discredited or discounted by the king's opponents…provided, of course, that said kings had the wits to use such consistently under-appreciated and underestimated resources as the Fools to their fullest.

Truly wise kings listened to their Fools, simply because for those with the perception to understand them, _they did not lie_ – and for the average king drowning in courtiers, that was worth its weight in gold. Of course, silly kings also listened to their Fools, if only for something to laugh at and feel a little better.

Once Dawn, hearing this explanation, happened to remind those listening of the whole 'One Who Sees' thing, of course, most of the Slayers gladly tuned out of the Watcherbabble, took Dawn's three-word soundbite with associated Slayer-dream montage and rested a little bit easier.)

_Like homing beacons, the Slayer's gaze fell upon the Fool's ruined face. Some gasped, some whispered the Fool's Name in recognition, and some eww'd at the grossness. Most just regarded the weakly smiling, one-eyed captive with wariness and a collective air of waiting for the other shoe to drop._

_**As if aware of the scrutiny of its audience, the Fool shifted, and his head rose, and his one eye opened—**_

* * *

**I**t should be kept in mind at this point that the information buried in mystic visions of all types had to come from _somewhere_. And really, with Xander flying at her and Xander trying to support her, what else was Willow going to be broadcasting about?

The bulk of the actual message, though? That was all on one Xander Harris.

More specifically, one Xander Harris who was in a metaphysical state of flux, mind forcibly contorted at that Moment into an open state in which the very stuff of souls, in all its predispositions and flavours and seasonings of experience, was made physical and intuitively easy to grasp. One Xander Harris that, as such, could _see_ into Willow's soul – and down through the pathways she had forged to so many _other_ souls, souls that Xander had over the years pledged himself to protecting in all the ways that he could, no matter the cost to himself, to bone-deep levels of his own soul, with such a fervency that even _he_ often had a hard time acknowledging.

* * *

—_**And as the chains surrounding them began to sing, the audience of Slayers was swamped in knowledge…**_

* * *

**O**ne Xander Harris who ached to be by their side, because in a way that mundane language could only mangle beyond legibility, he loved them all and wanted to be there with and for them. And integral to love and the bonds that it created was _understanding_, in a way that one Xander Harris in his mode of flux had actually begun to enjoy, and was thus at once clutching with the fervour of the religiously obsessed, and reaching out to share with everyone the beauty of that experience.

And what was the soul but everything that made him what he was? So in a way that the Xander Harris of even yesterday would have been aghast at once he managed to get over been absolutely mortified, Xander…decided to show-and-tell.

**I**t was especially important to note at this point that this included the roiling mass of what had until recently been his S.L.H. shadow-persona, a stress-warped conglomerate wherein endless expanses of additional experience and inhuman logics and pitted shackles had been torn apart, churned up and used to fill the cracks of the Xander-corpus like putty. Which in turn explained a good deal of Xander's potential for spiritual mutation at that moment.

And also explained why when the Slayer community at large got to experience the Cliff Notes of _This Is Xander Harris's Life_ in montage-form, they _also_ got the extra camera angles. So to speak.

That said, it was _also_ important to note that even Slayer-dreams could only play so far with a message. It was up to each recipient Slayer to interpret the result…which was where his reputation came into play.

The average Slayer knew almost nothing about Xander Harris beyond the inevitable rumours and a vague, distorted outline of some of the things he'd been credited with/blamed for. That sum knowledge pretty much added up to: _twinned the Slayer line, saved the world once or twice, lost an eye for a girl who didn't like him much, but otherwise an ineffectual goof and demon-magnet…who, coincidentally, has a large penis and is apparently good in the sack._ In other words, not really worth thinking further about unless you had to work with him, or perhaps as a half-decent template of something to look for in a romantic interest if you could do something about the rampant silliness.

Which, a thousand-plus Slayers simultaneously learned, was true for the most part. But oh, the _layers_…

Tales of heroism that had never been told, simply because he hadn't seen the point of telling anyone once it was over with – everyone was safe, so why fuss and distract them from the important things? Tales of pettiness, a comedy of errors that were subsequently pragmatically inculcated into his tacky, clown-like facade. Tales of bottomless reserves of ruthlessness when _his_ people were threatened, even when they were threatened by _others_ of his people. Tales of sacrifice, of slow death by inches and nails and rust and puppet strings, all borne with a cheesy grin to protect the so very, very little that he had left to call his own in a world that had never been kind to him and his – the most recent being a bare-bones summary of the one he'd made to get back to his people all the sooner.

_Ineffectual goof?_ Not when it really counted. Sure, a lot of bad stuff to go with the good, but when did it ever not? Oh, and _demon magnet?_ Okay, yeah, but that was actually both pretty well explained and pretty hard to blame _him_ for.

And underlying it all was the subconscious, the Xander-beast, the mounting discontent and the diamond-shard hatred and the grim foreboding, all buried under a masquerade so convincing that for seven years he had even mostly convinced himself with it through sheer grit, all grinding teeth and guttural raving at the way that he was _used_. By _everybody_. In a way that wasn't even particularly unique. There was no great destiny for Xander Harris, no sirree _bupkis_ – he'd just happened to be there, and handy enough for whatever use and abuse he was put to, starting with the drunken parents he'd learned early not to even bother complaining about to uncaring teachers and moving right on from there.

It was a beast that Xander had reflexively restrained for as long as he could remember, for fear that it would hit the wrong targets and wreck everything about his life. It was a beast that, now that he could see the true targets – not the people that he had unknowingly and yet willingly bound himself to, but the ones above and beyond, the ones who lazily counted on taking advantage of his very nature when they didn't use him for something specific – with his newfound clarity of understanding, he could not just unleash, but swallow whole and absorb into himself.

* * *

To the myriad Slayers, though, under the influence of their visions, it felt like a rancid sewer being dredged away to nothing as the taint of that beast left their notice. And the message left was, in essence, that he would be there for each and every one of them – no matter what _anybody_ or _anything_ else had to say about the matter. There would be _no_ argument tolerated, _no_ barrier allowed – he would _be there_.

_**An audience of Slayers wavered **_**en masse****_, left stumbling to gather themselves after the abrupt download of life experience witnessed at one remove. Only to be steadied as the chains' orchestral score crescendoed to a peak…_**

_And as over a thousand unseeing pairs eyes snapped to the throne-room simulacrum's awareness once more, minds making the traversal from reeling to what-fresh-hell-is-this?…_

…**t**he magical Rule of Intent once again came into play.

* * *

…_**by the caring grasp of a veritable crop of new-minted Fools. Each sprouting from the staples at each set of feet, each bearing their much-reduced set of chains with visible pride and vigour, each adorned with freshly sown motley, easily more visible under the personal binds that coiled comfortably around them like metallic serpents. Each with their own chains twisted around their own hands even as one end anchored itself into each Fool's chest and the other spun away from the staples to the original Fool.**_

_**Each denuded of puppet-strings. And each with two eyes – one of endlessly warm chocolate, and one of impossibly loving emerald.**_

* * *

**O**r more accurately, how that Rule applied when it came to:

A:- One tripped-out, spiritually unstable Xander Harris who wholeheartedly desired to be with each and every one of his people, which in that instant translated to each and every Slayer – and wasn't in any traditionally coherent state, let alone one which lent itself to telling the difference between altruistic love and spiritual mitosis.

B:- A thousand-plus literal-minded Slayers who, at least for that moment, had been wholeheartedly won over and each desired the endlessly loving, supportive essence of the being that they saw as Xander Harris to be with them just as much as he wanted to _be_ there with them.

C:- Several imperial shit-tons of magical power, much of it set to blast out into the ether in what would have been a shocking waste, and quite possibly fattening to various passing Others.

D:- …And a chunk of Keyness… Which, keeping in mind the fact that Elder Ku Lon's 'fine' control of the borrowed energies had been anything but exact, while but an infinitesimal fraction of the Key in its universal entirety, was still easily potent enough to manage a thousand-plus momentary portals to a thousand-plus locations all over one little mudball of a planet, before being absorbed in passing by the thousand-plus Xanders who had just just carved their own existence out of the pieces of the excess energies and the concentrated birthing presence of a minor Gaia (who had no protocols for dealing with this sort of thing – but, not being particularly interested beyond taking some form of direction from the witch, who was just as caught up in the sheer beauty of Xander in his completeness and thus of no mind to fight it, saw no real problem in the singular Moment she had to say anything directly about the matter) as they traversed said portals.

* * *

Rupert blinked. Then he quirked an eyebrow at the naked male figure who had confidently stepped out of that flash of green light. _Was that a portal?_

"Err, is that you, Xander?"

The naked 'Xander' looked over, and Rupert recoiled a little at being met with two eyes where he had expected one. Then he relaxed, a little, at the way both eyes (one a green of the same colour as the portal which had spat him out, which was probably more than somewhat important) warmed in fond recognisance upon landing on him.

Rupert had been honoured to see that warmth only a few times, usually tucked away under a mask of humorous irreverence. But that warmth was unmistakeable, and unmistakeably Xander Harris.

…Unless it was the First, in which case—

"Hey, Giles. It's been a while." Xander smiled gently. "I'd walk over and give you a hug, but…" He indicated his current garb, or utter lack of it, "I'd prefer having some pants on first."

Well, Rupert failed to see the utility of a pair of his trousers in any of the First Evil's possible schemes. Yes, _pants_ would probably be a good idea. Answers could wait for _some_ measure of common decency.

"Hmm, yes. If you'll follow me, I do have a spare set of clothes which should fit well enough for the moment…"

* * *

Dawn's screaming fit ground to an abrupt halt as Xander Harris stepped out of a flash of green light and sped over to catch her in his arms, her panic attack dwindling to be swept away with the sensations of warmth and flesh and support and safety and Xander.

Eventually, feeling much better, Dawn stopped to wonder about what was wrong with this picture.

"Xander?"

"Yeah, Dawn?" Xander replied innocently.

Okay, Xander was here. Xander was here. And with two eyes! How did that happen? _When_ did it happen, and why was it bright green? But never mind that, those eyes, even the new one, and the look in them could not belong to _anything_ but Xander. Even that horrible sensation of being ripped in half was fading, filling to wholeness as Xander held her. This could not be anything but Xander.

Xander was here! She squealed and threw her arms around him.

"I missed you," Dawn whispered into Xander's bare chest.

"I missed you, too," Xander whispered back as his grip shifted to a more comfortable position.

But there was still something wrong with this picture.

Okay, Xander was here. Which explained the warmth and support and safety. But the flesh…?

Okay, Xander was here _and he was naked_. She was hugging a naked Xander! Who was hugging her back! And not being all prudish about it!

But again, there was still something wrong with this picture. Naked, agreeably affectionate Xanders didn't count.

_Oh, shit—_

"BUFFY!"

* * *

Willow was caught, mesmerised by the sheer unexpected beauty of Xander Harris as she had never seen him before, in a state of completion, of potency, of _being_ that she had never even guessed him to have the potential of reaching.

Then she blinked, as thousands of Xander-duplicates rushed pell-mell through her pathways, seeking and finding the other ends of her earthly links before she could even think about closing them off. Which she promptly did, except for the one that she couldn't because there was a world-wide Slayer-dream of _everybody_ running through it—

Only to find Xander kneeling at her bedside, with his arms around her, holding her upright. (Which was a good thing, because she was sitting up in bed and she didn't want to think of where Xander's crotch could have ended up otherwise…)

Actually, Willow realised with a jolt, she actually kinda _did_.

"_Yup, you found me._"

She snapped back to attentiveness of her surroundings, and the conspicuous lack of Xander-crotch anywhere near her. There were more important things to think about here.

Like the fact that Xander (_the original, and still the best Xander!_ she thought with a thrill of purely possessive glee) had just spoken to her without his mouth. Or, Willow suddenly realised, his mind.

Or at least, upon closer spiritual inspection of her Xander, not just by sound or thought…

* * *

_**The wondering, awestruck eyes of the Slayer audience snapped back round to the originator of all these twinned Fools. Even Sineya leaned out of the shade of the tall tree that 'her' Fool had morphed into (which even now had already begun bearing **_**cheesefruit**_** for some inexplicable reason) upon entering her realm proper, regarding the most heavily bound captive with interest and suspicion.**_

_**The original Fool remained utterly bound, eye closed once more. But his clothing, his demeanour, his aura had **_**shifted****_. The patches and stains moved into patterns that somehow bizarrely _fit_ with the rejuvenated motif, borne with pride like battle scars. The Fool stood straight, unbowed now by the shackles that yet wreathed him, roped links compressed to two fine points that coiled around his grip on their way to their myriad destinations, each symbolising his own portion of responsibility for their weight upon him. The jester's hat remained tattered and torn, but had shifted position to adopt a rakish, insouciant air._**

_**The leash belonging to the female painted in emerald flame was gone, linked instead to the new Fool standing on her staple before her. The leash belonging to the red-haired female wreathed in light and bathing in shadow, the only woman present whose staple had not sprouted a new Fool, remained. The chastity belt that had constrained him was absent as well – as it was for each of the new Fools – leaving a codpiece of conspicuously large size in evidence.**_

_**The Slayer Collective witnessed, and was pleased.**_

_**The Others above witnessed, and howled in surprise and fury, even as the Fool's puppet-strings disintegrated and their cries muted with the fog that coalesced and obscured all but the merest hint of their forms until only the scarlet-washed moon shone down upon them all.**_

_**A Moment of breath, taken inward and held:**_

_**And the Fool's eyes opened. The warm, loving chocolate with a hard, unyielding core of his right—**_

_**and of his left, the coruscating **_**blaze****_ of a newborn copper-green star._**

* * *

"BUFFY! Are you oka— Buffy?" Oh, _that_ was what was wrong with this picture. "_Xander_?"

"Still here, Dawn," replied the Xander who was still hugging her.

"B-But, but… _Xander_?" Dawn squawked, pointing flabbergasted at the spectacle of a Buffy who was back and in the driver's seat once more… though there was some _completely_ justifiable room for doubt in that statement, what with the way she was ecstatically glomping _another_ naked Xander.

Seriously. Since when did Buffy ever do that?

"S'right, Dawnie," the other Xander nodded solemnly, both eyes sparkling with barely-repressed mirth as he looked over at Dawn. "Another Xander here."

"Nya-huh," her Xander confirmed. "You Xander number Three or Xander number Four?"

Buffy's Xander snorted. "Does it really matter which one I am? Either way, whichever one I'm not is over with Giles."

"Hopefully not _with_ Giles," Dawn's Xander riposted.

A moment of silence, followed by four full-body shudders as Dawn, two Xanders and a Buffy that had been frantically shoving aside all current attraction to a naked Xander and was gearing to interrupt, all paused to shake that mental image away with extreme prejudice.

"Yeah, anyway… In case you're curious, Dawn, I'm Xander number Two. The original's over with Willow in Rio." He punctuated with another squeeze. "Not that it matters, because all us new Xanders are _here to stay_, got it?"

Buffy opened her mouth to say…something which was never uttered as Buffy's Xander grabbed her jaw and turned her face around and up to be caught like a deer in the headlights of something that had been a true rarity up to this point: a pure, full-on, no-holds-barred, Resolve Face: Xander Version. Effective as much for its rarity, and thus its importance when it was actually resorted to, as it was for the standard difficulty in arguing with it.

"_Got it?_"

The elder Summers sister considered, for a few moments.

If there were two Xanders here, and a Xander with Giles in England, and a Xander with Willow, then taking that weird waking Slayer-dream on board – weren't there Xanders for everybody? A Xander for every Slayer, even? So if there was a Xander for every Slayer, and there were a bunch of Slayers in Africa HQ, then wasn't there a bunch of Xanders in Africa HQ? So where else could _these_ two Xanders go? And why would they _want_ to go anywhere else? After all, they came there to be with _them_.

Pure habit had her leaning towards accepting the idea for his safety, although again the Slayer-dream argued against the inadvisability of that idea. Not to mention, the subtle lack of wheezing as she'd squeezed the stuffing out of him earlier – maybe he was a little stronger now or something?

Buffy experimentally squeezed a little harder than was normally a good idea. The lack of pained reaction did seem to support that idea, and the fingers that started running through her hair were a definite bonus.

Though, what about the Immortal…?

Well, the eldest living Slayer had to admit that 'faithful' was not a word that could be applied in any way to the Immortal. And Xander, or at least the new and shiny Xander, wouldn't particularly _care_ beyond being Hers. Which, he _wanted_ to be Hers. That was the whole _point_. Why bother coming otherwise? Hell, maybe she could convince the Immortal to give him some bedroom tips…

Or, come to think of it ('_it_' in this case being certain portions of the Slayer-dream, which just went to prove that if anything Anya's claims carried a mild tinge of understatement to discourage unwelcome competition), maybe they could _trade_ tips…

And wasn't _that_ a swell idea?

She focused once more on Xander, whose face hadn't softened one iota despite the sure fingers combing through her tresses. And it occurred to her that quite possibly the single most important characteristic that Xander had been missing all this time, the one which had largely left him out of the running for her heart from the very start…was confidence in himself.

Confidence which he now had in spades, if that Look was anything to go by.

"Okay, you win," she meekly replied, a mischievous gleam in her eye the only betrayal of her amusement.

"Good answer." At which point he hoisted her off the ground and proceeded to kiss the living daylights out of her, by the end of which her limbs were wrapped around him like boa constrictors and there was prodding and pressing in places where there was _entirely_ too much clothing in the way.

Then her Xander was walking for the door, calling over his shoulder, "Well, see you tomorrow, you two."

Dawn stared in shock as the pair left, their voices carrying down the corridor as they retreated in the direction of Buffy's bedroom.

"_Are you sure you can trust yourself in there with Dawn?_"

"_Eh, love is love, sex is sex. All us Xanders know the difference these days…_"

She continued to stare as her Xander let go and stepped around her to shut the door behind them.

Xander stared back for a while. Eventually he cleared his throat. "So… interesting day, huh?"

"No shit," she muttered. Then there was a blur of movement and she was sitting on Xander's lap with his arms back around her. Sideways, more's the pity…

Xander smirked at the pout that began setting in on Dawn's face. "Hey, other-me's got a point. So listen closely, Dawn…"

She knew that tone. It was one that Xander had increasingly used when he remembered to, a tone that signified that he was speaking to her as an equal – _but_, that what he was saying was something that she really needed to hear.

"You've got me. You win. And there's no way in _hell_ you're losing me." A deep breath. "That said: is there really such a rush for the Xander-feast here? 'Cause if it's all the same to you, I'd be a whole lot more comfortable not pulling a Deadboy…"

He shrugged eloquently. And he did have a point, even if it was an evil point that deprived her of getting laid… eh, whatever. She'd wear him down eventually. In the meantime, she climbed under the bedcovers (still clothed, curses!) and beckoned Xander to join her – which, in his favour, he did with alacrity.

"So tell me… what the heck happened?"

* * *

"My word…" Rupert sat back, fingers and handkerchief vigorously working away at his spectacles. "A-and, how many of you have come into existence?"

"Hmm," Xander number Four mused, in white shirt, brown trousers and belt, sipping contemplatively at the Earl Grey that he'd been offered with every available sense of dignity. "Kinda hard to say. There are connections between us, but they've faded pretty fast. That state of mind's pretty hard to keep a hold of – it more or less shaped us into what each of us needed on its way out. If you wanted hard numbers, I'd advise you to set Willow and the original Xander on it – if I had to guess, I would say the changes to him are a bit more permanent. Can't tell you for sure.

"I _can_ tell you, though: there's probably one of us for every other Slayer. With Buffy, Kennedy _and_ Dawn in the mix, it's a reasonable assumption to make. That, and I'm pretty sure there's some others floating around…"

* * *

"Uh, Red?" Kennedy spoke up, leaning back with much more comfort than many might have otherwise been expecting against the chest of another naked Xander (though this one merely had a green eye as opposed to a fiery green orb in place of it). "Care to explain this one?"

"Patrol in Kenya, dead chaos demon, random portal, hell-dimension full of succubi, mind got pretzelled, another portal, magic overload, enough Xanders for all," the Xander behind her stated matter-of-factly, not at all offended by the way Willow didn't even look over. "What's to explain?"

"How about the fact that you're a woman now!"

"Now?" she-Xander snarked. "I've always been a woman – in the less-than-a-minute I've existed, anyway! Besides, would you really want to put up with a male version of me?"

Kennedy grimaced, gaze resting on where Willow and Xander were performing a strange arcane dance, each of them twisting in place to examine something that only the other could see, mouths moving slightly in the sub-vocalisation of a conversation gone unsaid with anything so mundane as vocal chords.

"No need to be jealous, Kennedy," she-Xander murmured, wrapping her arms around the young Slayer as they set in to wait for the twin causes of the whole mess to finish re-familiarising themselves with each other. She punctuated that embrace with a kiss to Kennedy's temple. "Of _course_ she loves him, you always knew that. But she loves you, too. I've _seen_ this." Her voice hardened, "And I love you, too – not just because you help make our Willow happy, but because you're a beautiful, strong woman who _deserves_ to be loved by a Xander just as much as Willow does." She-Xander suddenly laughed softly, adding, "That was a no-brainer even back when I didn't particularly like you. Did you think we'd go around getting our eyes poked out for just anybody?"

Kennedy rode the reflexive flinch at the reminder of her debt to _him_, and reflected on the message his female analogue was sending. And, she was reluctantly forced to admit, it matched a lot with her impression of that glorious Moment when she was confronted with Xander's love – not that all-encompassing love from the main Xander, but the singular love he felt for her, Kennedy, for _her_ alone.

There had been no sense of disloyalty in choosing to accept his help. It was freely given, not just to her but to everybody there in the vision, and right then there had been not even the slightest hint that she might deprive someone else of him by taking up that offer. He would be there for _all_ of them – and it had been impossible, in the face of everything he was and everything he offered, to disbelieve him.

And against odds so high as to be out past ridiculous and well into the territory of Satan retiring to become an ice-merchant with a sideline in bacon-flavoured poultry, it looked like Xander Harris had somehow pulled it off – coming through when it really counted, just like the story of his life had demonstrated time and again.

Oh, and turned himself into a woman. Solely for her comfort.

A surprisingly hot woman, if a little mannish around the shoulders and chin. And a very nice rack, that was currently pressed enticingly into her shoulder blades.

Yeah, she decided, _this_ she could live with… as long as the original Xander came nowhere near her with that monstrous _thing_ he called a penis.

…And speak of the devil, the First Xander smiled, gave Willow a brief but heartfelt hug, and ambled off to find some clothes somewhere.

A somewhat awkward silence descended.

"So anyway!" Willow declared with a clap of the hands, and a following rush of words as if to make up for her long silence. "I actually ended up venting away a teensy bit more of Gaia's blessing than I meant to, so we really should start shoring that up right away. I was thinking we could start off with a good long tantric ritual to get the magical juices flowing…"

Kennedy sat up straight. "Tantric?"

She-Xander sat up too, coincidentally pressing herself back against Kennedy. "Tantric, you say? Well, I suppose I should leave you to that…"

"Where do you think you're going, missy?"

Kennedy blinked. Had she _really_ just said that?

"Actually Ken has a point, Xander! The ritual would be much more effective if we had a virgin – you _are_ a virgin, right? What with being only a couple minutes old now?"

"Uhh— EEP?"

"Feels like one," replied Kennedy, bringing her hand back around from behind her. _Okay, so I really _did_ just say and do that…yeah, whatever. It's all in good fun._

Besides, what Xander in their right mind would turn down a hot lesbian threesome?

"Great! So…Xandra, that'll do right? If you don't mind sacrificing your virginity for a good cause…"

"Eep?"

* * *

"Hmm, what the hell was that abou— X?"

"Morning, Faith."

"…So, good to see you and all. Were you wanting somethin'?"

"Me? I was just waiting for you to wake up. Were _you_ wanting something? Apart from Naked Xander number Six?"

"Huh? Number Si— oh yeah, I got the memo…" A brief pause, with a little more wakefulness on the part of one party by the end of it. "Six, huh?"

"Yeah. Willow, 'cause she was the biggest target to aim for. Dawn, 'cause those damn Dagon monks made me her soulmate. Buffy and Giles, 'cause of that Enjoining spell thing a few years back. Then Kennedy, 'cause she was right there in the target sights with Willow, then you. Why, does it matter?"

"What do _you_ think, genius?"

"I think those Xanders got theirs – and I got mine."

A long, heavy silence.

"So what're ya waiting for, a written invite?"

"Nah, a spoken one'll do…"

Sounds of bedclothes shifting, and springs groaning into new positions.

"…Xan?"

"Yeah, Faith?"

"I threw Robin away…"

"And you're worried about history repeating?"

A short silence, which nonetheless spoke volumes.

"Well, for that I've got one word for you."

"…Yeah?"

"Oral."

A snort of laughter, followed by a brief inner debate. "…Yeah, works for now."

"Good to hear…"

* * *

Vi yawned, blinking dazedly. "Xander?"

"Yeah, Vi?"

"…Aww _nuts_! I'm not even legal till next week…!"

* * *

A twelve-year-old Slayer snapped wide awake, air bursting into her lungs to scream at and/or pulverise the intruder—

"Hi."

—Only to stop in shock at the familiar, naked man standing over her.

"Yeah, sorry about the hand over your mouth. Didn't want your parents charging in here and getting the wrong idea."

The hand moved away. It was hard not to trust those brown and green eyes, though, so she kept quiet and wondered why he was here.

"I'll explain later. Right now, though, I'm going to see if there's a set of your dad's pants I can borrow on my way out." A soft smile, like her big brother's only much kinder. "I'll see you in the next few days, Mighty Mite." And with a quick peck on the forehead, the familiar naked man from her dream stepped out of her room and closed the door behind him.

Michelle stared at the door for a while, listening carefully as the man wandered downstairs to the laundry and wrestled quietly with, probably, a pair of pants out of the hamper, sneaking out the front door afterwards. Then she shrugged and went back to sleep.

* * *

Xander gazed unblinking into wild unfocused eyes, sitting at one end of the cage as Dana sat restrained at the other. She would still thrash every so often, though he could tell she'd calmed more than slightly since his appearance.

It was all right, he knew. He could wait. And if she didn't come out of this…? Didn't she deserve someone to be there for her anyway?

* * *

Chao-Ahn's eyes refocused, landing squarely on the tall young white American man from Sunnydale. Who was naked. Very, very naked.

"…Xander?"

"^Hello, Chao-Ahn. I have not seen you in a long while,^" he confirmed in flawless Cantonese.

Chao-Ahn recoiled as if struck. "^You speak Cantonese now?^" she demanded.

Xander recoiled back. Then he frowned, "^It would be pointless to be here with you if I did not.^ Can I still speak— ^Good, I can still speak English…^"

Chao-Ahn conceded this. The symbolism of her Slayer-dream had been perfectly clear on this.

"^I have longed to speak with you for a long time, Chao-Ahn. Would you tell me of yourself?^"

"^Can we leave this market first? Or at least find you some pants?^"

"^Yes, that _would_ be a good thing to do.^"

* * *

"XANDER!"

"Yes, it is I, Xander Harris, returned from a distant hell-dimension to my African home and the lovely ladies therein!" A brief pause, during which a ridiculous pose was dispensed with to add: "And so are these guys!"

* * *

"Hello, Renee isn't it?"

Silence, with a touch of drool.

"My eyes are up here, Renee."

"Yes, yes they are…"

* * *

Xander looked down at the dead Slayer at his feet. The sight of her broken neck made his brain freeze in its resetting to something approximating Earth Standard. Then contort into an entirely different, and far more unstable configuration as he looked up at her killer.

Said killer, a Fr'nk'nagaath who had taken opportunity of the Slayer's moment of inattention during their battle, recoiled back at the fatal resolve in the new being's eyes. It, along with its Fr'nk-nest, began to realise that perhaps this might not have been a good idea after all.

"…Candy-Gram for Mongo?"

They never got to end that surmise. As it turned out, one Xandersoul committed to its own violent self-destruction was quite capable of wiping out one teensy little subterranean cavern.

* * *

**X**anders all over the world came into abrupt being, each drawn to the Slayer whose soul called for them. Each adjusted, as best they could to where they had manifested. Each mutated at least somewhat from its Patient X beginnings to better suit their chosen ones. Sex and age changes were rare but not unknown. (Though there was one particular Xander called to Japan who somehow ended up looking a lot like a certain blonde Slayer…) Language skills, on the other hand, were a common theme in many Xanders.

Most importantly in the Collective of Xander, each aligned itself with the most desired expression, the favoured flavour of love that their chosen one cried out for. Xanders by the score became pseudo-fathers, pseudo-brothers, nigh-sexless confidants, or just the very personification of the understanding, supportive friend their chosen had required.

But, in flocks and in droves, by far the most prevalent adaptation was the one about letting themselves be attracted to their chosen ones.

Because if there was one thing that just about every known Slayer above a certain age wondered about one Xander Harris, it was whether he was really as great in the sack as the rumours said he was. And the Slayer Collective witnessed the truth, and were well pleased…which in the minds and hearts of horny teenagers everywhere, really could only lead to one result – especially when their personal Xanders were so very willing to love them for it.

…

**O**h, and lest it be forgotten: Willow _did_ happen to have other opened pathways that the soul-flood of Xander Harris just happened to spill through. Which meant, yes, yet _more_ Xanders appearing naked and puzzled in Devon, Tierra del Fuego and the major covens situated therein.

Hey, people that Willow loved to the extent of magically linking herself to them were probably worth _him_ loving too, right?

(Fortunately, they were very understanding once he'd explained matters to them as best he could. Especially once they'd made their own diagnostics and came up with the same general conclusion – if much more insanely complicated.)

**N**ot to mention, in the original Xander's outreach effort, some few stray links of his very own… some of them foolhardy on the face of it, if for necessary reasons.

* * *

Drusilla gaped at the apparition before her, absolutely shocked for the first time in…well, a very long time.

"I did _not_ see this coming, no not at all! Miss Edith, did _you_ see this coming?"

Miss Edith gaped back at her, just as flabbergasted.

Xander blinked down at the vampiric seer. "Yeah, this'll end well."

This drew Drusilla's attention back to her Kitten, who had grown up to be a big cuddly house-cat who smelled like Bast and power and love even where it wasn't wise. And, she found it important to note, her ex-Kitten with a cathood of considerable size.

It was perhaps fortunate for this Xander that, amongst all the assimilation of the shadier parts of his shadow-persona, he was one of those few of them who had, while retaining the core of their loyal, loving Xanderness, picked up more than a touch of darkness around the edges.

"Are you thinking naughty thoughts, Dru?"

"Are you going to punish me for them, Bast-Cat?"

"Are you going to say please?"

As the conversation continued on and became and more more…involved (and demonstrative), Miss Edith went off and sulked in the corner. This would _not_ end well, _not least_ for Miss Edith.

* * *

Dracula blinked, and quirked an eyebrow at the flash of pearlescent green light before him. His aristocratic features tightened in bemusement as a familiar figure stepped out of it.

He gathered himself quickly. "Ah, my errant Manservant, you have returned. I had been contemplating whether I would have to retrieve you."

Xander Harris spared only a momentary mental curse at being the one lumbered with Dracula's mental mindwhammy before bowing. For all his other loves, it must be borne – even this. "Master. Please forgive my absence; I had matters to attend to before I could return to your side."

"Hm," the Dark Prince considered. "And your…_dress_?"

"Apologies, Master. Such matters were outside of my control. A downside of the travel arrangements."

Eventually Dracula conceded the matter. He was here. He even appeared to be here of his own free will, which was a pleasant surprise; this augured for more competent service.

More to the immediate point, he was stark naked…

"Follow. I shall arrange for your attire."

…and Dracula's wives were still awake.

* * *

"Xander?"

"Oz."

"…How're you?"

"Pretty good, all things considered. You?"

"Yeah, I'm cool."

"Cool."

"…"

"…"

"…So, pants?"

"Yeah, those'd be good."

* * *

"Thank you," Angel whispered to his empty office, his infernal phone, and the aching hole in his heart, which had just been torn a little wider with Cordelia's passing.

And, it turned out, an intruder, which shuffled in from the boardroom. Reaching his vampiric hearing at it approached came, "_Strange, I could've sworn she was here just a mi_nute ago_—_"

Xander stopped, and looked at a grieving Angel. Angel looked up, and stared at a naked, confused Xander with two eyes and more than a taint of the supernatural clinging to him.

Disbelieving cries of, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me…" rang out in tandem.

* * *

And stretched out on the Rio compound's roof, as several Xanders in the building beneath him got down to the rewarding work of being there for their loves in all that such entailed, the world's newest demigod (for had he not performed thousands of 'miracles' in the space of a handful of seconds? All over the world? With many of them near minor Hellmouths, and their potential for mutations on the quantum level?) smirked up at the sky and rejoiced in his freedom.

Through his soul's enlightened windows (especially the one on the left), he could _See_ all the fates who had once held his strings as they squabbled and bickered over who was to blame, scrambling in futility to keep their plans in play even as they stretched out to nudge those of others into ruination. And it was plain to See that not a single one of them knew what to do next, beyond hoping that they could catch up. But they were behind the eight-ball if they tried anything funny – because now he was _there_. And he was _watching_. And the Cipher had become _Legion_.

That was worth a good, well-satisfied laugh from Xander Harris, right there. So that's exactly what he did. And as he did, he imagined one far-distant dimension, and hoped one 'Elder Ku Lon' fell off her metaphorical cane and wet herself in hysterics at the sight.

(Though had he looked, he would have been disappointed. 'Ku Lon' was actually rather busy…)

* * *

…

**S**o…

_No_, it was not in the least bit easy for all those mystical experts to work out what had happened. Even the ones who largely succeeded – like Willow, and Althea of the Devon coven, and Rupert Giles, and even (or perhaps _especially_) the archetypal Xander himself, who had both the original advantage of being at Ground Zero for the whole thing, as well as the new and immeasurable advantage of being able to call on the knowledge and opinion of multitudes of slightly different twins of himself – ran into yet more difficulty when trying to explain it all to other people.

It wasn't anyone's fault, really. It was just that some parts didn't translate well to language, and some parts didn't mean anything unless they were put together with other parts, and there were so very many parts to try to keep track of.

The most detailed explanation was formulated as a joint effort between Rupert Giles and Althea, with the help of Xander the Fourth (who proved as per Giles' own unstated desires to be one of the more erudite Xanders). The resulting dissertation, which was longer than many Ph.D theses and read much like one, was promptly dropped into the New Council archives, under lock and key, barred to all but those poor deluded souls who wished to genuinely research the topic.

The most intensive, 'expert's' explanation was formulated as another joint effort, this time between Althea (head of the Devon coven) and Carissa Sartines (researcher of the Tierra del Fuego coven), with input from Xander the Fifth when they could pry him away from Kennedy and Willow for long enough. (The Xanders which had arrived at their covens, it transpired, were among the most 'normal' of the Xander Collective; which was explained in terms of the lack of prior intelligence possessed by the Xanders in question, being more of an exploratory platoon than called-for reinforcements in nature.) The resulting monograph, which was even more impenetrable and riddled with jargon than the New Council's efforts, was promptly transcribed and encoded into a creation myth, which was carved in magically imbued marble – polished by the hands of fifteen Xanders, which added an extra layer of encryption – and eventually buried face-up inside the Scottish castle that would become the New Council Headquarters. Trust Wiccans to know the values of mystification…

The most true explanation was volunteered by the First Xander, as he would come to be called (admittedly just one moniker among many of them). It was the shortest, and also the hardest to understand. As Willow Rosenberg translated it: "_That was then. Then It happened, and this is now._" When met with sheer disbelief her considered response was a helpless shrug.

(That said, the First Xander was more helpful with the final statistics: 1,537 Xanders created, 114 undiscovered Slayers paired off with a Xander and thus found (and in 18 of those cases, broken from captivity by various malevolent agencies) soon thereafter, 7 Slayers killed or mortally injured because of succumbing to a Slayer-vision in the middle of a fight, 4 Slayers killed in a cross between euthanasia and retributive strike after being found in inescapable, untenable conditions, and 4 more Slayers killed because their paired Xander looked into their hearts and saw corruption and evil so well-entrenched that ending them was simply the best thing that could be done to preverve what little of their souls could be redeemed, along with something in the general region of 60 deaths of various demons, dark magicians and so on for killing and/or corrupting said dead Slayers. Oh…and 81 Xanders locked up for indecent exposure, followed by 715 losses of Xander-virginity within the first seven days' period after that Moment – none of those, fortunately, while in lock-up. And also not including Xander number Two – much to Dawn's disappointment.)

The vast majority of the thousand-plus Slayers, on the other hand, preferred the simplest explanation…which was distilled down from the most fantastic explanation, which was unsurprisingly formulated by an awed but somewhat pouty Andrew Wells. Sure, there were vast holes of detail and in-depth knowledge and the totality of that Moment. But, as Buffy noted approvingly when Xander the Third came out with his version some weeks later, at least it was short and funny.

That explanation…

And, ahem: IF YOU READ THE PROMISE OF A SUMMARY, SAW WHAT YOU'D HAVE TO READ THROUGH OTHERWISE AND JUST SKIPPED STRAIGHT TO THIS POINT, THEN IT'S TIME TO START PAYING ATTENTION!

That explanation, that summary, ran:

"Xander Harris, _plus_ chaos demon, _plus_ Hell dimension, _plus_ Willow Rosenberg, _plus_ portal, _plus_ a couple old spells, _plus_ a thousand-odd horny teenage slayers, _plus_ lots of hippie weirdness, _plus_ a tiny little bit of Key… equals, _The 2004 Crisis of Infinitely Molested Xanders_!

"Oh, and also: _Profit_!"

(Hey, he never said he was complaining.)

* * *

**Ending A/N:** So. Brain melted yet? Next up, and to finish, a short epilogue (1K or so), which should go to explain rather a lot about where this came from. (Also: yes, that was a shout-out in there to **dogbertcarroll**, why do you ask? There was also a subtle one for **TheDivineDemon**, namely the 'Sunny's Little Helper', a Simpsons' reference to the memory-twisted 'Satan's Little Helper'.)

**Ending A/N2:** Thanks very much also to NarutosBrat, who caught a fair-sized mistake that managed to slip through the editing process.

Again, thanks for reading, and please leave reviews/concrit on the way out/past. The final installment will be up within a few days.


	3. Experiment

**Disclaimer:** refer first chapter.

**A/N:** Okay, more like a couple weeks. Sorry, I got sidetracked. In the meantime, much thanks to **studyofchaos **(yeah, that could also fit), **Muffyn1**, **dyri** (I _did_ say 'crack pairing', did I not?), **Starway Man** (yeah, that's actually the entire reason for picking this particular timeframe, for reasons hinted at below - as for Oz? think of it as a reminder of not just Willow's but Xander's spiritual links to him, back before much of the craziness) and **Chronopie** (yup, some laws of the Buffyverse are simply unbreakable) for their reviews.

* * *

**To Grind the Organ of Divergence**

**Chapter 3: Experiment (Further Research Required)**

**or,**

**'…oh, and it was _Dark Willow_, in the _canon dimension_, with the _chaos demon_.'**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

Meanwhile, one hundred and eighty-seven years in the future and a handful of alternate realities over, the figure who held the final piece of missed information in the puzzle sat and observed the utter chaos she had wrought with a certain understated bemusement.

One of the many, _many_ things that the terrible, lonely being that had once been the Wiccan witch Willow Rosenberg had learned over two centuries on Earth and a near eternity in realms of both the higher and lower planes of sidereal existence, was that it _was_ in fact possible for magical entities to manipulate chaos demons – you just had to know how. (In fact, as she'd eventually worked out, influencing the inspirations of a range of demons was one of the PTB's favourite means of indirectly steering the Champions _via_ the application of specific stressors. This approach was largely necessary due to the Balance's mechanics _heavily_ discouraging the direct influence on Champions by those other than their stated lords and masters (PTB, Senior Partners, The First, the entities that powered spells, etcetera), who even then were required to do so only in certain prescribed ways.)

Of course, she'd actually done nothing more than drop her old childhood friend Xander Harris in a hell dimension to live out his worst nightmares and see if _that_ would change the damned timeline – but _noooo_, that turned out to do nothing but spawn an alternate dimension too, didn't it?

Though she did have to admit, she would have never in a million years guessed that normal everyday Xander Harris could have turned into…_that_. Maybe there was something she could do with that…

After so long, the vast majority of the Xander Collective had passed on…at least, the first wave. Because as it turned out, most of the various extraplanar entities and bodies corporate had withdrawn to await the fallout following the Xander attached to Angel's gang calling in heavy reinforcements prior to the assault on the Circle of the Black Thorn and thus putting a massive dent in the entire Angel-as-Twilight arc of causality… Only to be locked out _en masse_ when the First Xander had somehow pulled another miracle out of his ass and sweet-talked _Gaia_, of all the Goddesses, convincing her that she was much better off without them. And without Them, the Balance had both shifted and changed dramatically in nature and effect.

In that dimension, the magic was still fading away. Only, it was doing so far more gradually and with far more grace than it had here. The Slayer line had eventually dwindled back down to 'one girl in all the world'…only, _this_ one was backed by the full and enthusiastic might of the N.S.W.X.C. (or, the New Slayers' (just in case), Watchers' and Xanders' Council), led squarely in the van by several dozen descendants of that regenesis of Xander Harris. Of course, it wasn't that impressive compared to the original wave, or even the original Xander. But then, the original Xander was still floating around – and in any case, the great majority of that Earth's hostile demons had been culled or almost so, to the point where the active Slayer and the N.S.W.X.C.'s remaining coterie of heavy hitters mainly stopped any dimensional incursions, collated their knowledge for a rainy day, and generally acted as a _de facto_ police force for the supernatural underworld.

Maybe 85 percent of that first Xander collective had died with their chosen ones – which, most of them being Slayers, was relatively early in their lives. Approximately seventy of them had stayed behind for a while to raise the children (most of which had the 'Harris' dropped from their names for ease of differentiation), and perhaps half of those lingered a while longer to see the grandchildren before passing on to join their original loved ones in the afterlife. One mildly interesting factoid was that there were fewer Xanders in the heavens than one might have otherwise expected; it seemed that those blessed realms had their own inalterable standards, and only the Xanders who had lived long, full and enriching (or at the least full and enriching) lives in their own individual right were granted entry upon death. Others spent their time congregating in one of the far-flung hells, which several hundred Xanders had liberated and turned over to the euphemistically named 'eternal torment' known far and wide as '_The Endless all-Xander Gang-Banging of Anya Jenkins_'.

Who was indeed a-wailing in 'eternal torment'. Yup. She'd checked.

There _were_ still a few of the first wave out there. One still serving his old friend Dracula, while occupying his wives' attentions when the Dark Prince wanted some alone-time. One still putting Drusilla through a range of moderately exquisite tortures, with the odd drop-in on the Immortal (who incidentally, indeed _had_ traded tips with Xander the Third – much to Buffy Summers' delight and exhaustion); nowadays the vampiric seer was somewhat saner, if leaning considerably further towards the masochistic end of the S&M scale, with a death toll that had tapered down to a mere few criminals per year. And one more still hung around to pester Angel, Spike and Illyria…although not so much Illyria, who he doted on in much the same way as the other two doted on their masters/pets. As for Illyria, she appreciated the low-level 'worship' and periodically experimented upon the strange delicacy that was called 'sex' when the occasional urge took her…

Somewhat interestingly, the last time she'd looked in on the hell dimension that Xander had briefly sojourned in, she had seen 'Xian Pu', 'Ku Lon's' granddaughter, playing with her own thoroughly whipped Xander-slave. Subsequent investigation revealed that the dimension's ruler had scraped together the remnants of Xander's siphoned energies (still a fair bit, though not enough to match even the First Wave Xanders), and given him to her granddaughter as a gift after getting over her disappointment.

And as for the First Xander, that singular anthropomorphic nexus of Free Will incarnate…

She stilled.

…was he staring back at her?

A long, laden moment followed, where two dimensions seemed to hold their collective breath…

Only for the two distant individuals to shake their heads with a certain sad finality.

With a little smile and a mouthed '_good luck, Wills_', Xander Rosenberg-Harris turned away and caught up to his love, who darted a quizzical look at him. He answered with a distinctly non-committal shrug, which a far-distant entity accepted as the parting gift from an old, long-lost friend that it was.

On the negative side, she mused, there was no help from that quarter. On the positive, there would be no _interference_ from that quarter either. And besides… (she cast her all-seeing eye back one hundred and eighty-seven years back, taking a much closer look at the underlying context of that timeline) …while the prior divergences were subtle, they _were_ there. Which meant that she had actually hit an already extant alternate reality instead of spawning her own. Which in turn meant that some promise remained in this approach.

At the least, it would be something else to research while the remaining years ticked by on her planet called Earth, ever-closer to her personal, fated endgame…

* * *

**Ending A/N:** And here we come to the premise of each of the 'Divergence' series: that Dark Willow, over the years alone before her endgame (as per 'Time of Your Life', mid-Season 8 Motion Comics), attempted on multiple occasions to change the past in other ways – either hitting or spawning a good many divergent realities in the process. I've got about half-a-dozen floating in my head at the moment, most of them in somewhat unusual split-off points (for example with Sweet, or at the age of 4).

A second, underlying assumption is the reason that most of her efforts in this pastime focus on Xander. Namely, that as alluded to throughout, 'the Balance' is a Cold War-style detente where all sides keep a very close watch on their Champions, and discourage (albeit sometimes with mixed results) the attempted meddlings of interlopers high and low (such as Dark Willow-from-another-dimension). The peripheral pawns, though? The Xanders, and the Rileys and Jonathans and Gunns of the world? The game is built around their characters acting a certain way, which for the most part can be relied upon to shape events, unless it need be altered or removed occasionally to dis/encourage a series of events from/into occurring. It is because of this rare need for intervention, and thus the lax watch kept on them, that Dark Willow can slip in the odd interference at certain points, without the Powers, Partners etc. caring too much…or in this particular case, simply leaving the lot of them flat-footed.

'Lost Your Head?', in this context, could be considered an example of what would happen were Dark Willow to attempt slipping in interference at poorly-chosen points, i.e. those points where the various interested Fates would be watching more closely than usual. 'Graduating Divergence' is a better-executed attempt, where Dark Willow prodded him after The Zeppo's events to read something that he might not otherwise have read.

For the explanation, in case you missed it or were expecting something differect? Referred to why things went so far off the canon-track. Though as the second-to-last paragraph alluded to, events up to this point only (probably) _nearly_ match canon - for no other reason than that I haven't watched or read anything beyond the first half of Season 8 and nothing of Season 9, so I've likely missed little bits. Think of it as Joss-proofing.

—ox-oxo-xo—

And while we're here…

(For those who lost track) The Pairings?

Willow/Xander (_mostly platonic_); Kennedy/fem!Xander/Willow; Dawn/Xander; Xander/Buffy(/The Immortal); Faith/Xander; Vi/Xander; Chao-Ahn/Xander; Renee/Xander; Satsu/Buffy-lookalike!Xander; Xander/Drusilla(/The Immortal); Dracula/his Wives(/Xander) Illyria/Qua'Ha!Xander; Ku Lon/Xander-shade (just the twice…or so); Shampoo/Xander-shade; Anya/hundreds of Xander. And those are just the stated ones.

Consider the parody complete…or at least, as complete as I'm gonna make it without wading into Adult-rated waters complete with scuba gear. Though if _you_ want to write up a fivesome of Satsu and her Buffy-like fem-Xander getting it on with the BXI or WKX, or the eternal torment of Anya or whatever, then be my guest.


End file.
